Mind the gap

I will be spending the 2011-2012 academic year in Israel, traveling the country, volunteering and learning to live communally with others in a program sponsored by the progressive Zionist youth movement, Habonim Dror. I’ve always known that this particular itinerary was one in which I was interested, but the decision to take a gap year was not an easy one. How could I interrupt society’s sacred track, with its prescription of stopping neatly at the stations of “high school,” “college,” and “career?” I have no qualms about jumping off the train, rather my fear manifests itself in my personal life: my friends, my family, myself.